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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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It is good to go back to the source, zBrown.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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PSP also PP asks:
Ed is this true or urban myth? Has there been physics pursuit in this area?
of what TC wrote:
Celestine Prophesy...
which is a novel, made into a movie. Novels may very well be a way of exploring possible explanations of things, they do not constitute a report of scientific research, nor are they held to the standard of scientific research.
Nicola Tesla pointed out that when science begins studying non-material phenomena, more progress will be made in a decade than all its previous history
I cannot determine a citation for this quote. But interestingly, if you find this "Prepared Statement of Tesla (For interview with press on 81st birthday observance)" it is full of scientific discussions with no real statements of the type in the above quote.
Tesla also stated that if you want to understand the universe, study vibration and frequency
This is often tacked on as the second sentence of the unattributed quote above.
Academic sciences are still a hundred years behind Tesla and have embarrassingly not been able to assimilate the revelations of quantum physics, as it blows apart the physical universe Matrix upon which the controllers depend for enslaving human minds
Not sure where this comes from, it is an opinion rather than any consensus, so TC could defend it. As for the "revelations of quantum physics" Tesla wasn't a proponent, but his important work in electrical engineering happened around the time that many things in physics were changing, dramatically. His foundations were in the physics of the 19th century, the time of major unification of physical phenomena into Maxwell's electrodynamics.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Hey everybody, what up? I was sick and down for the count for the holidays but am perking up. I had no problem sleeping and reading books without opening my computer for a few days. I got Yuval Harari’s, Sapiens, for Christmas, which is one of the books I read during this time. Anyhow, enough about me. Firstly, I’d like to comment on some posts in reverse order.
Healyje said
So, for me the question is which is more likely: minds emerge from brains or new brains somehow channel a universal consciousness? When I look at the potential of 100 billion neurons and a 100 trillion synaptic gaps absent any remote idea of how those physical elements become receptive to a universal consciousness it's just not a hard call for me. Further, if there were a universal consciousness, why would meat be necessary at all; imbuing meat with mind seems, well, a mindlessly ludicrous and pointless exercise no matter how I look at it. But hey, that's just me. That’s about as good an argument as I can think for arguing for mind created from brain as opposed to brain discovering universal consciousness.
HFCS said:
eeyonkee, so it sounds like you are focusing on the nervous system's long term memory's influence on both (a) decision making and (b) morals. Do I have this right?
You are interested in its role - as input - to the decision-making module, the morals module and ultimately, I'm guessing, to the agent's volition (will) and responsibility (which were the core subjects of our earlier conversation).
The role of long term memory - and the fact that it is always changing, even always growing, is your interest of focus at this point?
How does this change the fundamentals, though? I remain a little confused on why the long term memory component of the nervous system has you enamored by it so. Yes, you have it nearly exactly right. I’m a modeler at heart. I’ve been involved with modeling systems or creating the ability to model systems for pretty much my whole career. The recursive interplay of memory and decision-making (as well as the society of interacting human agents) just seems to me to be the right place to work on this problem of free will. Again, as I suggested, the other parts of the decision-making process are more or less static. Your genes give you a certain propensity to act this way rather than that way for a given set of starting conditions. Your working memory is more or less your CPU and relatively fixed in its nature as are your basic senses such as sight, sound, touch, etc. These, it seems to me, are not the right places to look for “freedom” in a decision, almost by definition. Your memories, on the other hand, are dynamic and always updating your unconscious decision-making input parameters.
Gazzaniga’s notion of the Interpreter is central to my (current) model. What he basically hypothesizes is that your decisions (including your moral decisions) are subconscious, but that your consciousness of your decision is an after-the-fact story or model that you concoct to explain the decision. The decision is actually the result of subconscious biochemical algorithms, just like a cat reacting to the sight of a bird within kill-space. Both the decision and the Interpreter’s take on the decision use your long-term memories, but they use them in different ways because they are completely different subsystems (I would use the term engines).
The difference between the actual long-term memories and, say, the decision engine and the Interpreter, is that memories are data while the decision engine and the Interpreter are code. It's actually a lot more complicated than that of course, because memories are never just pure data. They are always attached to other biochemical algorithms such as feelings that are, as such, code-related-to-data.
The decision will always be based on the most update-to-date “facts” (memories, for you) and you cannot help but reflect your subconscious algorithms' churning out the optimal answer. Your “responsibility” for the decision will only come after going through the Interpreter and finding meaning “after the fact”. I hope this also explains my position on another of HFCS”s posts about not understanding Gazzaniga’s after-the-fact take. The after-the-factness is at the very heart of it, IMO. It does not require some mysterious decision-maker to emerge on the world stage, but rather, is on a continuum with the algorithms behind "instinct" in animals.
Lastly, HFCS asked:
Did you also watch the Q/A at the end of E4?
Let me know if, or when, you finish E5, E6.
No, but I will. Um, no. Got side-tracked, but I will and will report back.
Also, Moose, you and I are on the same page with respect to free will. I would put it most simply this way; From a decision-making standpoint, you are always a slave to the just preceding events. There is no room for "free" decision-making regardless if the event is random or determined.
One more thing that I got from reading Sapiens. Harari postulated that the decision-making process among communicating Sapiens will naturally reflect level 2 chaos. Level 2 chaos is the chaos that happens when two different initiators of chaos interact. I haven't been able to find a lot of supplemental information on this, but I sure like the idea,
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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While I agree with most of what you have said, it should be pointed out that this was roughly the tact taken by behavioralism, which was later junked, for several reasons.
I am not sure what was junked, it is a simple fact that behavior is what is expressed when life interacts with the environment, and other life.
That behavior is "third person" cannot be anything else in these interactions, between other people, for instance, or people to other animals, or more largely the entire ecology. The internal thoughts of people are not accessible to any of those external agents except through behavior.
Our experience is also dependent on many things external to us and available only in the "third person." Evolutionary processes take place by interaction of individuals in many terms, but particularly in mating behavior (describing sexual selection) for which the two individuals negotiate only in terms of the "third person."
Evolution does not depend on the "internal state" of the individual (the "first person") so far as it is not expressed (by behavior) and experienced by others in the "third person." Behavior adaptations all take place in the "third person."
So it would be hard to understand that behavior isn't a very important aspect of explaining evolutionary adaptation.
Comparisons of human and other animal genomes would be especially interesting, as that genetic material is a record of our species evolution, and the plan upon which we are built, and that includes consciousness (mind, etc...). Some articles I posted up thread explored those differences and the implications.
While we now have something we call "consciousness" (or better "mind") it is not clear when this happened, and whether or not humans always had it. There are many relics from pre-history that seem to indicate that they may have, and even close species to us had it, but it is certainly not clear that they had our experiences.
It is a bit of an extrapolation to assume they did.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Level 2 chaos is the chaos that happens when two different initiators of chaos interact.
it would probably behove the discussion to avoid confusing a precise definition of systems with chaos with the way this particular quote uses the term, and even that the implication that the interaction of "initiators of chaos" is known.
I think there are a lot better ways of describing what is intended here without resorting to words that make it seem more than it is.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I want to take on a few of Ed’s comments to me (I'm not worthy).
It would probably behoove the discussion to avoid confusing a precise definition of systems with chaos with the way this particular quote uses the term, and even that the implication that the interaction of "initiators of chaos" is known]
I think there are a lot better ways of describing what is intended here without resorting to words that make it seem more than it is.. Fair enough on the level 2 chaos, Ed. I knew I should have reviewed the source before I posted that. It’s not central at all to my position. It
was a new idea to me that I tried to describe in my own words after the fact (and badly).
That behavior is "third person" cannot be anything else in these interactions, between other people, for instance, or people to other animals, or more largely the entire ecology. The internal thoughts of people are not accessible to any of those external agents except through behavior. This is something that I hope I can make you feel differently about. I guess that I am more or less advocating for a memetics view of the situation. I think that memes propagate through a population of communicating humans and are always self-correcting within the individuals through time. The memes dictate behavior. Example memes; whites are superior to all other human subgroups, Christianity, a penny saved is a penny earned. Memes are saved in our memories
Evolution does not depend on the "internal state" of the individual (the "first person") so far as it is not expressed (by behavior) and experienced by others in the "third person." Behavior adaptations all take place in the "third person."
I was going to write something here but then realized that I don't understand what you are saying.
So it would be hard to understand that behavior isn't a very important aspect of explaining evolutionary adaptation.
While we now have something we call "consciousness" (or better "mind") it is not clear when this happened, and whether or not humans always had it. There are many relics from pre-history that seem to indicate that they may have, and even close species to us had it, but it is certainly not clear that they had our experiences. Hey man, I have been arguing for this for some time on this thread. You have to look at all of this stuff in terms of tree-like structures. Almost certainly our extinct homo cousins had some form of what we consider consciousness.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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the only way that two individuals interact is in the "third person"
one does not have access to any "first person" directly
memes are always product of behavior
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Ed wrote:
the only way that two individuals interact is in the "third person"
one does not have access to any "first person" directly
memes are always product of behavior I look at it this way. At any point in time, one or the other individual initiates an event that the other has to respond to. Each participant recognizes the other as an agent. As the responding agent, you assume and anticipate that the initiator has a reason for the change. In other words, you have a theory of mind about the initiator.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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all third person...
if I write an article and publish it, 100 years from now someone might read it and respond... but they will not be able to interact with me at all
here the agency is delayed, but the interaction is preserved in "memory" (the article) external to either agents
still the result of behavior
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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if I write an article and publish it, 100 years from now someone might read it and respond... but they will not be able to interact with me at all
here the agency is delayed, but the interaction is preserved in "memory" (the article) external to either agents
still the result of behavior
You're a smart cookie, Ed. I would say that the interactions are preserved in memory but the reasons are stored in the Interpreter.
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WBraun
climber
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When the living entity leaves his gross physical material body he carries his mind and intelligence with him to his next body.
Ed will surely be a physicist in his next life, not that, that is the real goal .....
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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When the living entity leaves his gross physical material body he carries his mind and intelligence with him to his next body.
Ed will surely be a physicist in his next life, not that, that is the real goal .....
Why should Ed need a next life? I have a hard enough time understanding his positions in this life,
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WBraun
climber
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Why should Ed need a next life?
Because he's not finished yet.
You have to keep coming back to the material world until figure why you're really here and who you really truly are.
Theories, mental speculations, and guessing will do you absolutely zero good.
Saying there's one life only and then your dead and done won't do you any good either because it's NOT TRUE.
Everyone knows they've had previous lives but have forgotten, but their consciousness and experience is the giveaway if you know how to read consciousness.
Then you go to the real world/s.
But gross materialists will stubbornly hold on to the illusions of the gross physical material worlds assuming that is all there is .......
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Infinite recursion
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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This whole discussion continues to astound me with how much intellectual brilliance can be brought to bear in obfuscating a basically simple issue.
It is quite wondrous and laudable how scientists have explored and described the design complexities and implementations of our finely tuned and mathematically balanced material/biological universe.
It is similarly wondrous yet not-so-laudable how many of these great intellects carefully avoid examining the conceptual simplicity that may underlay the topic question of this thread....a discussion I would greatly like to hear...
And the longer the simplicity is avoided, the more complex become the intellectual machinations countering the simplicity.
Most discussions hosted here busily counter any of the ideas of universal consciousness that are commonly accepted by many ancient cultures outside of western academia, yet these seem to be supported by the findings of quantum physics. Is it just too challenging to seriously examine such ideas without the topic being heavily biased like the Washington Post against Russia....
I do understand that our languages and western culture and sciences and heavily invested commercial interests have been structured to reinforce a materialistic view of the universe...within which consciousness, if it even exists, arises as a very limited anomaly. However the sciences avoiding it seem to have hit a wall in trying explain a unified understanding of space-time fields, and the four forces.
Some exceptions worth considering include Roger Penrose, Rupert Sheldrake, and Robert Lanza
As I noted above, the proofs of quantum physics upset the applecart of conventional views and have not been properly assimilated either scientifically or philosophically. Ed didn't address my comments above, but simply questioned attribution....whether or not Tesla said anything about it, I say it...
...Everything is conscious...usually with some or other specialization of awareness. All of us here have awareness specialization in rock climbing as a sport and philosophical laboratory.
You are not a body. You represent a viewpoint of universal consciousness currently associated with your body. Individualization is a concentration of specialized awareness. You don't cease to exist when the body dies. You will eventually abandon the body and move on to something else. If you aren't mentally prepared for that you will be like the lottery winner who throws it all away without a clue how to manage.
The more you quiet the busy thinking of your mind, the more you can expand your awareness of the universal consciousness.
We are all one......
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zBrown
Ice climber
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infinite recursion plus one
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Again, why would a universal consciousness need any material manifestation? Boredom? Entertainment? I personally am not busy countering it, but rather have simply dismissed it entirely after giving it some pretty serious consideration.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Good question Healyje....i suspect the answer to that is a playground...
And we have barely begun to understand how it is constructed....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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When I sit down and read Isaac Newton, especially the Queries included at the end of his Opticks I marvel at how immediate the feeling is. But Newton has long been dead, 293 years, and we still get to hear him, he does not us. What would he think of this thing he started?
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