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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Oct 11, 2017 - 03:38pm PT
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And thanks Largo. I understood you perfectly the second time around.
It's said that the last desire to be given up, is the desire for enlightenment. Only then does it happen.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 11, 2017 - 06:06pm PT
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Thanks, Andy. I had done the search, but was disappointed in the graphs and absence of mathematics - other than "a decline after age forty of about 1% a year". I had also read over the article you linked. A lot of the information on the web is qualitative and general and much of it relates to Parkinson's. And much of what is more specific lies behind paywalls.
There seems to be a correspondence of sorts between dopamine decline and estimation of time intervals.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 11, 2017 - 06:38pm PT
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It's said that the last desire to be given up, is the desire for enlightenment.
No living entity has ever become desireless.
Desire is the symptom of the living being and life itself.
Desire can be changed but not ever stopped.
Desireless is the symptom of dead stone .......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 11, 2017 - 07:30pm PT
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The emotions locked in the unconscious mind, are much more difficult to perceive and understand,
Understood. Agreed. It wasn't clear that this was the aspect of the unconscious mind you meant.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 11, 2017 - 08:00pm PT
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John G,
I have very little knowledge of neurotransmitters and their distribution in the brain. In classes at Chicago we were told that Parkinson's was connected with cell death in the substantia nigra (and maybe with exposure to the flu virus of 1918).
It would be hard to study levels of dopamine in human brain, I surmise, since much of it would be stored in pre-synaptic vesicles waiting to be released by membrane depolarization. There may be no safe easy way to measure how much there is.
Estimating time intervals seems to fall into an area of study called psychophysics. For example, people are very good at telling when intersecting lines are perpendicular versus slightly off perpendicular. Psychophysics also looks at our ability to tell when sound or light levels increase or decrease slightly.
Psychophysical judgements could be sensitive indicators of age-related decline. But assigning the decline to any particular cause would be hard to do.
Have you taken those visual field tests where they ask you to push a button when you see a flash of light? Myself, I would not volunteer for any psychophysical study. Too anxiety-provoking when you are tested on the limits of what you can detect.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 11, 2017 - 08:33pm PT
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No, I have never taken those tests, other than standard optometrist stuff.
In speculating about the imaginary part of a complex time variable, it's straightforward to assign a logarithmic function, which, when differentiated, gives a measure of a multiplicative factor applied to an increment of clock time. The older you are the more you underestimate passage of time in small intervals. Just playing around.
Like Blanche and Stella.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 11, 2017 - 09:54pm PT
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Always wondered if Gell-Mann knew what he was doing with that term.
I think Gell-Mann is an intellectual, and a damn good scientist, and had a reason to choose that particular phrase.
Of course Zweig wanted to call them "Aces" which would have been great since there were 4 as of 1974, but then two more came up... so more like a dice, which would have begged a Grateful Dead reference.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Oct 12, 2017 - 11:10am PT
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There seems to be a correspondence of sorts between dopamine decline and estimation of time intervals.
I'm in a rush right now but here is one of my favorite blogs on Dopamine/Time. No math included but there could be plenty downstream of developing links on this subject.
https://www.jackkruse.com/time-6-time-and-dopamine/
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 12, 2017 - 11:13am PT
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Dingus, you misunderstand. I believe that you're working off the idea that all meditation is equal, or is, or is trying to, do the same thing. Not remotely so.
If someone is working on the Jhanas it does not mean someone working on following their breath is "doing it wrong." It simply means they are working on anther aspect of the work. Someone working on chemistry is not, by working in that way, telling the physicist that he/she is working wrong. They are not working on the same issues. Simple as that.
Fact is, the person working on breath is doing exactly what needs to happen. There's a progression. You normally don't climb 5.9 without first climbing some easier 5th class routes. Usually a whole lot of them. The person climbing 5.9 is not necessarily "better," just more practiced. That's why they call it a "practice."
The Zen playbook is only comprehensible to those who are approaching the end game. It confused the f*#k out of me when I first got there.
One of the reasons Zen is so unpopular is that in many cases a person is left to try and do no-mind meditation long before they can remotely start to do so. Like putting a noob on a 5.12 slab. No chance. They only people who hang with the process are either a little crazy, are excited by the glimpsed possibilities, or have excellent instruction (very rare).
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 12, 2017 - 11:51am PT
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Dingus, you misunderstand.
“The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life
and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou
If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul.
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 12, 2017 - 12:10pm PT
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They only people who hang with the process are either a little crazy, are excited by the glimpsed possibilities, or have excellent instruction (very rare).
You forgot that some are continuing from their previous life/lives.
A materially conditioned living entity can go thru millions of rebirths and not all on this planet either before it comes to full realization
and becomes free from the cycle of birth, death, disease and old age .....
(Oh, but the gross materialists foolishly say there is no such thing as it's not in their so-called data base)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 12, 2017 - 03:53pm PT
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A materially conditioned living entity can go thru millions of rebirths and not all on this planet either before it comes to full realization and becomes free from the cycle of birth, death, disease and old age .....
OK, so that's what the Wizard is getting at. Thanks.
jackkruse.com: Light has weight. As it falls to anything with gravity it gets heavier because light has momentum
Huh?
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Oct 12, 2017 - 05:02pm PT
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The power of reflex is a pretty neutral subject or one that a person can brag about. This is the one I always end up bragging about (about 15% of the time it's worth bragging about). It's all I got.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Oct 13, 2017 - 04:30am PT
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per jackkruse.com
Maybe his blue light theory on dopamine reduction can explain why I do not like or feel comfortable with those blue headlights now appearing on cars coming at me?
Is there a need for meditation if you have had a good supply of dopamine all your life?
Religion? The fanatics say enlightenment will get you out of the cycle of reincarnation. Could one de-enlighten himself to get more dopamine by living more lives?
KOOL
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 13, 2017 - 08:30am PT
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I think Gell-Mann is an intellectual, and a damn good scientist, and had a reason to choose that particular phrase.
Really? What was it?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 13, 2017 - 01:57pm PT
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A materially conditioned living entity can go thru millions of rebirths and not all on this planet either before it comes to full realization and becomes free from the cycle of birth, death, disease and old age .....
Sez Gill: OK, so that's what the Wizard is getting at. Thanks.
Is that a fact, LOL. I put this alongside your quips about meditators sitting in "trances" or "states" and reaching for non-stuff in a "religious" quest - all silly caricatures - we can easily see why. But why not have some fun with it, sort of your own version of the nerdy scientist with high-water pants, a beard (of course), and who couldn't get lain with a gold brick. Not very accurate, of course, but chiding any camp outside our own is part of the game. It also tends to keep us on familiar turf, where our beliefs can't be challenges. Smug, usually, but so it goes with us humans, along with all the rationalizations.
Fact is, I have challenges enough getting hold of this life, let alone wrangling other lives. Not sure what "rebirths" etc. actually mean because I have no data or worm hole into getting any.
And our own Dingus McGee asks questions about meditation being "necessary," then seems to answer his own question with a chemical solution - dopamine. That is, providing one has the right quotient of dopamine, meditation becomes needless.
Would we still have a need for, say, biology, or baseball, or canasta, or face climbing, if our dopamine levels were up to speed? Or are we studying biology, playing baseball, dealing canasta, and crimping face holds owing to the lack of said chemical?
I think what this underscores is that when you go into a question with suppositions drawn from afar, or merely imagined, your thinking is bound to take curious bends and dips into the most fantastic conclusions.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 13, 2017 - 08:24pm PT
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I think what this underscores is that when you go into a question with suppositions drawn from afar, or merely imagined, your thinking is bound to take curious bends and dips into the most fantastic conclusions.
The same can happen when you go into a question with suppositions drawn from near and not imagined. Your oddly serious response to a quip is a good example.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 13, 2017 - 09:12pm PT
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JL: sort of your own version of the nerdy scientist with high-water pants, a beard (of course), and who couldn't get lain with a gold brick
Damned inaccurate. You forgot the pocket protectors.
Why would anyone want to "get lain" with a gold brick? Humans are softer.
;>\
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Oct 14, 2017 - 05:34am PT
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Largo,
I think what this underscores is that when you go into a question with suppositions drawn from afar, ...
"From afar" ? Hardly dear John. We hear stories of yogis controlling various unconscious bodily processes. Certainly dopamine release mechanisms make for a relevant question as to ask, "Does meditation induce dopamine release better than the healthy things you do that have given you a life with dopamine abundance"?
Beer and alcohol initially do release dopamine but ...
The bottom line question is why would one seek meditation if they already had abundant release of dopamine from their healthy lifestyle?
Chasing enlightenment? Hardly.
Ending the cycle of rebirth? Hardly.
Please pass more dopamine? -- that short lived brain chemical made from exercise in sunlight and cold but not in a house of blue light.
One does meditation to have a meditation credentials in the ST site, "What is Mind"?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 14, 2017 - 08:18am PT
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Yogis manipulating the subtle and gross material energies has nothing to do with dopamine.
Trying to lead yourself and anyone else who is so clueless to imply or suggest it's only dopamine that's at work here shows your complete bias and attempt
to always steer everything to something you can grasp with your defective material senses.
There is an astronomical amount of knowledge that is so far out of reach and beyond your fixed up prison of materialism masquerading itself as science.
Bottom line you really are clueless to anything outside of the inferior material energies even clueless to the much of the material energies themselves
and how they can be manipulated in their many different ways.
And then what to speak of the subtle material and the superior spiritual energies.
But all you have is "There is no need for this" and ultimately the most st00pid of them all is "NO ONE KNOWS".
You people are insane .....
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